National Marathon Doubt

I ran hard in January (thank you L and S) with the intention of running a spring marathon. I had picked out the National Marathon in DC as a target race on March 24th. This was all fine and dandy till about a month ago when I started thinking do I really want to do this? Do I really want to put myself through this? Why not just have a nice vacation type trip with my family and have a good time? I really began to doubt myself. However, I have received such support from my wife that I am going to commit to it today. She has been so supportive with her words of encouragement and even fixing my spaghetti before long runs. She says go for it so I am. She's been running a little herself lately. I think the running thing is starting to sink in with her because I asked her how her "walk" was and she became offended! She said "walk? I'll have you know I only walked a little bit!" I'll be making the marathon arrangements tomorrow. I wanted to get in one 20 miler to see how it would go before I signed up. Accomplishing that would help me kill the doubt.

After church, I hurried home. The thermometer said 27F. There were snow flurries flying on this windy day. It was the worst day of weather in the last several days. I had worked hard around the house the last two days. Cutting firewood, digging ditches, unloading about 4 tons of gravel with a shovel... I was sore from the waist up. My ab muscles hurt whenever I did any sudden movements or ran a few steps. This is probably the least enthused I've ever been about running long. I didn't want to start it. Finally, I just pushed through the doubt and ran.

My family was having dinner at the Big Wheel so I decided to run to Alderson. I had my ipod and started by listening to a podcast on Terry Fox. The young man who had knee cancer and was forced to amputate his leg and get a prosthesis. He then decided to raise awareness of cancer so he attempted to run (with one real leg) from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean across Canada. After 3000 and some miles he had to quit because the cancer spread to his lungs. He raised lots of money and there are still benefits in his name today. I figured if anything would inspire me to get started that story would.

I ran the 8 lonely miles to Alderson, went into Glen Ray and ran around then up the Monroe side of the town and across the old bridge. From there I headed up by the bank turned left and circled back around to Ross's. I walked a little bit during this and I stopped for about 10 minutes in Alderson to refuel with some Gatoraid and a honey oat bar. At this point I had about 12 miles under my belt so I headed the 8 miles back home. About mile 16 I started to break down a little and had to walk a little bit but soon after I started feeling like I could keep running and was able to run the remaining 4 miles with no problem. The main thing that helped me was that at mile 18 the song "Burning Love" by Elvis came on and got me going.

I ended up with 20.5 miles. I think my overall time was somewhere around 3:30. Marathon pace will be 20 miles in 3 hours flat. So I'll have to run harder. I swear to you that it is uphill both ways from Pence Springs to Alderson. I got home and downed some ibuprofen to help with the swelling and pain in my legs but it wasn't the worst I had ever had by far. So I really think I had about 6 more slow ones in me. Within an hour the pain was basically gone the fatigue was all that was left. I feel good so National Marathon here I come (If I can find a hotel room that is...)